


Clearly Labeled

by resolute



Category: Wayward Children Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24322891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resolute/pseuds/resolute
Summary: Nicole finds her Door.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	Clearly Labeled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RingThroughSpace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RingThroughSpace/gifts).



_ Peoria, Illinois _

_ October, 1992 _

Nicole waited on the hard plastic chair outside the principal's office of her middle school. The school mascot was in the linoleum tile of the hallway, an overly-cute tiger with one paw stretched out towards the viewer. She checked the tile count as she always did when passing the mascot. Three grey tiles to the left, under the window of the office secretary. Two and a half grey tiles to the right. Whoever had installed the linoleum had not cared enough to center the mascot in the hallway. It was a quarter-tile to one side.

The door to the office opened to Nicole's left. She glanced up. Mrs. Kadzys, the assistant principal, smiled. "You can come in now, Nicole." Nicole picked up her backpack and followed the woman in. Mrs. Kadzys smelled faintly of orange, leaving a slight trail of citrus in her wake.

Inside the office Mrs. Kadzys walked around her desk and sat, motioning for Nicole to sit in the chair next to her father. He smiled at her. The only person in the room not smiling was Mr. Tuftman. He scowled, his thick arms crossed over his barrel chest.

"I've heard from everyone but you, Nicole," Mrs. Kadzys said. "What you think is happening in your Social Studies class. Can you tell me?"

Nicole blinked. She looked at the adults in the room. "... I guess, social studies? Is happening? In the class?" she said.

"And what are you doing during class?" Mrs. Kadzys asked.

Nicole sat up straighter, more confidently. This one she could answer. "I'm finishing up all the library books on Greco-Roman mythology," she said. "There are some interesting variations between the cultures. Also, the movie Clash of the Titans got a lot of things very, very wrong."

"See?" Mr. Tuftman said.

Mrs. Kadzys looked at him. She looked back at Nicole. "Is that what Mr. Tuftman is teaching?"

"Oh, no," Nicole said. "He's teaching the class to identify the countries of the world and their capital cities." She looked at the globe on the shelf behind Mrs. Kadzys. "We've made it up to Asia, but a lot of people seem stuck there."

"Are you stuck on Asia?"

Nicole shook her head. "No."

Mrs Kadzys nodded. "Can you tell me the nations and capitals in Asia?"

"Sure." Nicole looked up at the ceiling tiles. She always looked up when she was thinking. Her dad said that she could read the answers to things in the sky. "Afghanistan, Kabul. Armenia, Yerevan. Azerbaijan, Baku, though that's still disputed." She looked at Mrs. Kadzys. "But it's being recognized by the U.N., so I think it counts."

"Thank you, I think it counts, too. That's enough." Mrs. Kadzys looked at Mr. Tuftman. "Bob, would you mind stepping out for a moment, please?" He got up. He did not slam the door behind him. Nicole thought he wanted to, but she wasn't sure.

Mrs. Kadzys watched Nicole for a moment. Nicole started counting the ceiling tiles. "Nicole, do you understand what Mr Tuftman's complaint is about?"

Nicole shook her head. "Not really. Every time he calls on me I know the answer. And I make sure to always raise my hand when he makes a mistake. He has trouble pronouncing UlaanBaatar. I get 100% on every worksheet and test. That's what I'm supposed to do, right?" She looked at her dad. He had his pinched lips look, which either meant he was trying not to laugh or trying to not say something rude. Nicole thought of it as his eating-words face. She felt a wave of doubt. "Or … am I supposed to be doing something else?" She slouched down in the chair, feeling suddenly smaller.

Nicole's dad scooted forward in his chair. He turned to face Nicole, and took her hand in his. "Kiddo, it's like this. Part of class is learning the material. And you are great at that. But part of class, part of school, is about learning to follow social rules. I know you know a lot of them, but there's an additional one that you missed. You have to give the appearance of paying attention to the teacher."

Nicole felt her face get red. "But I am paying attention," she said. "Every time he says something new, I pay attention."

Her father raised his eyebrows. Nicole felt tears start in the corners of her eyes. "I'm supposed to look like I'm paying attention even when he says the stuff I already know," she half-whispered. "I'm sorry. I should have figured that one out." She looked down. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

"It's okay," her dad said. He squeezed her hand twice, their code for not-actually-mad-at-you. They needed a code, because a lot of the time people said one thing with words but meant something else with faces and tones and things. Nicole always understood words. She had a lot of trouble with the other stuff. Especially when they contradicted each other and she had to guess which was the real text. "There's one more part to this, though, that you can't guess, and no-one here wants to explain to you, so I will." Nicole peeked up at him. He was looking at Mrs. Kadzys. "When you correct Mr. Tuftman, he gets mad because he thinks he is supposed to know more than his students. And when you know more, he feels that the other students don't respect him, and he gets mad at you because he thinks you are trying to make him feel stupid on purpose."

Nicole's head snapped up. Her mouth fell open. "What?" she said, very loudly. She swallowed hard and took a breath. "I would never try to make anyone feel stupid on purpose," she said more quietly but with just as much emphasis. "Never. Making other people feel stupid for not knowing things is antithetical to me." She looked at Mrs. Kadzys. "I mean, it goes against all my ethics." She groped for a way to explain it, in case Mrs. Kadzys didn't know what antithetical meant. "It's a sin," she said. "Making other people feel stupid on purpose is a sin."

Mrs. Kadzys had the eating-words look now. "I believe you, Nicole. And I will explain to Mr. Tuftman. But in the meantime," she said, looking at Nicole's dad but still talking to Nicole, "how would you like to spend your social studies class hour in the library, doing a research project?"

  
  


_ Peoria, Illinois _

_ January, 1993 _

The clock on the wall above the light switch ticked loudly and in two pitches. TIC-tek-TIC-tek-TIC-tek. Every other second, alternating. Nicole had worked out that between the fifth period bell and the end of period bell, each tone sounded 1260 times on average. It might be 1261 or 1259, depending on which sounded first after the bell ended. The bell lasted nine seconds. An odd number. 

On the second Monday in the library, Nicole had tried to determine which tone, TIC or tek, would start the period after the bell ended, working from the last bell on the previous Friday and calculating through the weekend. To her chagrin she had been wrong. It had taken her two days to wonder whether the bell rang in the empty building all weekend long, or if it was manually turned on and off at the start and end of school days. Her calculations had been predicated on a continuously running bell, day and night, seven days a week. Mrs. Roth, her homeroom teacher who was used to Nicole's questions, had explained that, no, the bell was turned on and off by the front office each school day.

How disappointing. It was human behavior that made predictions so difficult.

Nicole closed her book. It was, as far as she knew, the last book in the school library on Norse mythology. She would have to find something else to read. This was always disappointing. What Nicole wanted, what she always wanted, was something exactly like the book she had just finished, except one she hadn't read yet. New books were different, and hard to adjust to. Books she'd finished were too predictable, boring. Nicole got up, book in hand. Perhaps there would be another mythology book, maybe on Celtic myths or German, something nearby to Norse.

The stacks in the middle school library were metal, the kind with modular ends and sheet metal shelves that made a short, deep wooorp noise when you lifted up a particularly heavy book. Nicole knew the Dewey Decimal System by heart and walked unerringly to the 290s. She reshelved her latest and began looking at the titles. Nothing she hadn't read yet. 

Nicole sighed and leaned her head against the shelf. The books smelled good, paper and glue and the crinkly plastic that the library used to protect the covers. Standing with her head forward, Nicole noticed something. A small slip of paper had fallen to the carpet and was laying partially under the bottom shelf. She crouched down to pick it up.

"See also 398 Folklore"

It was old and the tape on each end was brittle. From where she was, Nicole could see the slightly dirty marks on the shelf in front of her where the label had once been held in place. 

"Hm. Okay," Nicole said. She stood and walked around the end of the shelf and into the next row. The numbers on the books climbed comfortingly, orderly and predictable like any good organizational scheme should be. But Nicole reached the end of the shelf and paused. There was a gap. A jump, from 380 to 405. Nicole backed up. No, there was definitely a skip in the progression of numbers. Nicole looked around. Perhaps they'd been moved for cleaning? Or the section had been checked out by a class, and was waiting on a reshelving cart? She spotted a door, then, at the end of the row. A perfectly ordinary door, dark brown fake wood with a silvery handle and a small window with wire-mesh-glass. A sheet of paper was taped to the door with the handwritten note, "Folklore."

Not, Nicole thought with a weary lack of surprise, "398," which would have been much clearer. She walked to the door, turned the handle, and walked through.

The room behind the Folklore door was dark. Nicole groped the wall on her left, where the lightswitch ought to be. Nothing, just the slightly sticky feeling of painted concrete. The light from the library behind her did not seem to provide much in the way of illumination in this space. Nicole could see the bottom of the end of a shelf. Not the metal shelves of the rest of the library, some sort of wood. She moved into the room and crossed to the right-hand wall, behind the door's hinges, reaching for a light switch. As she did so, the door began to slowly drift closed. Nicole found the wall and drew her hand back, startled. The way was not painted cinderblock, but a sort of weird fuzzy covering. Like the felt used in flannelboards in kindergarten. Nicole had never liked that texture. She had just given up on finding a lightswitch, not wanting to touch the wall again, when she heard an ominous click-clack from the now-closed door.

The first thing Nicole realized as she stood very still, was that no light was coming in the small window in the door. There really, really, ought to be some light. Cautiously Nicole inched back towards the door handle. She reached blindly in the now pitch-black room and found a wooden door where the fake wood ought to be. She slid her fingers slowly towards the handle. She found one. It was an ornately bumpy metal knob, not the plain aluminum lever handle on the other side. She reached up for the door's window. She did not find it. Heart pounding in her chest, Nicole turned the knob.

The door opened.

Nicole bolted through it, back into the library, breathing hard and fast as if she'd been running. She hadn't been. It was fear that made her gasp. Standing safely in the library proper Nicole turned to look at the strange door and the dark room. From this side, the door was a normal school door. It had swung shut. She peeked through the glass. On the other side was a small classroom, with some mobile book carts with taped-on labels. The lights were on. Along the back wall a cart with folding tables was pushed slightly crooked.

Nicoled opened the door and looked in. The room was dark, with the bottom edge of a wooden shelf just visible. Still holding onto the outside handle, Nicole stepped forward and inspected the back of the door. She could barely see it. Something was interfering with the light from behind her. But, still, there it was. A wooden door. A round knob, maybe brass, with a raised pattern on it. No window. And there, in the middle, just above where she had groped along it a moment ago, was a note. It was tacked to the wood with two small nails. Nicole tugged on it and heard it rip free. She held it close to her face, squinting at the words written in plain block letters.

"Be Sure."

Be sure? Be sure of what? 'Be sure' was one of those phrases, like 'trust me,' that required another clause in order to have meaning. A person Nicole would trust to cook a meal doesn't mean she would trust them to give her a good grade. Nicole was sure of many, many things. Whole worlds of information were firmly in her memory. But other things, other people, specifically, she wasn't sure of at all. People were not something one could be sure of. People were outside the scope of the term.

"Be sure," Nicole said quietly to herself. She looked into the room. She thought she could see it slightly better now. "Be sure," she whispered again, experimentally. Yes, she could absolutely see more. "Be sure," she said confidently. 

The lights in the room beyond the door came on.

  
  


_ Somewhere _

_ Somewhen _

The door closed behind Nicole. This new room, the Somewhere Else room, for Nicole no longer believed that this space was located inside her middle school, had a floor made of wood in tiles and patterns, a sort of off-kilter zig-zag that looked like impossible zippers. Some of the tiles were a dark red-brown, some a lighter red-tan, and the pattern was very pleasant to look at. The shelves were wood, with high bases and tops that looked like the tops of ancient Roman or Greek columns in history books. The shelves all stopped short of the ceiling, which was decorated with vines and grapes and fruits, trees and waterfalls and cliffs. From where she stood Nicole could not tell if the ceiling was carved wood or some sort of molded plaster. The walls -- the walls were fascinating.

The walls of the room were covered in a dark green velvety wallpaper. The fluffy surface had been carved into pictures, and underneath the green the wallpaper had a coppery golden shine. This reflected the light from the wall fixtures. Each lamp was on a brass or bronze torch, the lightbulb screwed in where a flame would have been, and topped with a paper shade that looked like fire. Each torch was held out from the wall by an elaborate wire frame structure. They looked like flying buttresses, or twisting helixes, or the arms of construction cranes. The pictures in the wallpaper were of a hunt. Nicole stepped closer to see.

Yes, it was a hunt. But the hunters were trees, rocks, and even stranger, some of the hunters were tables or chairs or other made objects. They were hunting people. Small people of some sort. And when they caught the small people, the objects tied them up and carried them away, bringing them to a … a door. The objects threw the people through the door. Nicole looked around again. That was interesting. She wondered what the people had done, to merit being thrown through the door. 

"Tstch." Nicole made a small sound of annoyance. There were too many assumptions in her last train of thought. First, she didn't know whether what was on the other side of the door was good or bad. Second, she didn't know whether the objects were chasing innocent people, hunting murderers, or getting rid of pests. Third, she didn't know who had made the wallpaper, what their goals were, what they were trying to say. She set the story aside for the moment and looked around some more.

The shelves held a number of artifacts. Not books, which Nicole found disappointing, but interesting items. Cufflinks, eye glasses, cups, a jeweled knife, buckles, a bowl full of teeth, a pocket watch -- all sorts of things. After a few minutes Nicole began to see the pattern. Nothing that would decompose. Nothing organic that was not bone, teeth, or horn. Not even wood or leather. The shelves were not crowded, everything was easily seen. Some, but not all, were resting on a nice cloth, or sitting on a small stand. It wasn't quite like a museum, but close. A collection, Nicole thought. This is someone's collection.

She passed the last shelf and found herself standing in front of another wooden door with a brass (she presumed) knob. Tacked to this door with two small shiny nails was another note.

"The Answer Holds the Key."

Nicole frowned. She tried the knob, knowing even as she did so that it would be locked. It was. She looked around again. "The answer holds the key …" she said. Answer to what? She methodically reviewed her experiences since she had come into this room, examining each step she had taken for a question, one she could answer.

Ah. Of course.

"I'm sure," Nicole said to the door. It clicked, and it clacked, and it swung open.

  
  


_ The Other Place _

_ A bit later _

This time Nicole expected the other side of the door to be something new. She was not disappointed. The place through the doorway was a beautiful open outdoor space, like a city park, with tall trees and lots of grass, sunlight peeking through the leaves in a pleasant dappling manner. Nicole checked this side of the door for notes. There wasn't one this time. Perhaps that meant the instructions were only there to guide people through the waiting room. Nicole filed this hypothesis away pending further evidence. She walked backwards into the park, watching the door. It swung almost closed, but stopped with the latch touching the strike plate. Nicole nodded. "I understand," she said to the door. "Thank you." She turned and walked into the open space under the trees. There were no paths here. There were, instead, things that looked like places to walk to. Nicole headed for the closest.

The nearest … sculpture? Construction? Art piece? Nicole wasn't sure what to call it. It was a fountain, she supposed. A large rock projected from the earth, the grass growing up to the edges of it in a manner that suggested the rock had been here a very, very long time. The striations in it were on a diagonal, as if the rock were a stack of plates pushed up from underneath at a sixty degree angle. On the side closest to Nicole water trickled from a crack between two such plates. It pooled lower down. The trickle noise was pleasant and the water looked inviting. Nicole realized she was thirsty.

Except there was more. Surrounding the basin of water was a frame of wood, a box full of intermittent smaller pieces of wood with gaps between them. It made a screen preventing anyone from reaching the water. Nicole stepped closer. "Always test hypotheses," she said to herself. She found a likely opening and reached through. As she suspected, her shoulder struck the pane before her hand could touch the water. Nicole pulled her arm back. 

She sat down and studied the wood structure. It was five sides of a rectangular prism. Probably of a cube, but without measuring Nicole would not swear to that. Each face had an irregular frame with smaller solid panels at various points. There was not a pattern Nicole could detect. She studied the panels for a while. Nicole only realized it must have been a long time when she noticed her throat was clicking roughly when she swallowed. She was very, very thirsty.

Nicole stod, her legs protesting with the movement after so long in one position. She stretched and looked back the way she had come. The door stood there, in the middle of the glen, no building around it. She could go back. Go to school, get a drink, use the restroom. Come back. But there was no certainty that she could get back. Nicole had never seen this door in the library before. She was not certain that it had existed before today. How that was the case, she wasn't sure, but one always had to start with the facts as they were and not with what one wished them to be. 

Nicole looked back at the water. If she could get to it, she could stay here longer. Long enough to perhaps find food. Nicole reached forward and wiggled the prism. The framework was solid, but one small piece of the panelling moved. Nicole pushed it. It slid along the frame. Nicole closed her eyes and took a slow breath, fighting the overwhelming sense of triumph that rushed through her. It was a sliding puzzle. She was sure of it. A sliding puzzle like the number puzzle she had at her desk in homeroom. 

Nicole opened her eyes and began to assess the puzzle. Cautiously at first, then with more confidence, she moved the pieces of wood from place to place in the frames. In a few minutes she had created a gap large enough for her to lean through. She did so, reaching the water. Cupping her hands in it, Nicole took a drink. The water was delicious.

Some time later -- Nicole wasn't quite sure how long, the sun didn't seem to move in the sky in the way she was used to, and she couldn't see it very well through the trees -- she found another puzzle and her dinner. This puzzle involved moving a circle of rocks to make the circumference of a cylinder larger, so that the height of the shape inside became lower, so she could reach the fruit on top. Soon after that Nicole found a cozy cave to rest in, the opening of which was blocked by a thicket of brambles which had to be twisted into a pattern that kept them out of the way. 

Fed and sleepy, Nicole slept.

When she woke Nicole went first to the fountain. To her chagrin she saw that the water had slowed to a bare oozing and the wood frame of the panel seemed to be dry and brittle. Nicole got a few sips of water and frowned at the puzzle. It did not seem to be a coincidence that the water was no longer flowing after she found a way to drink from it. It was possible, she supposed, that the water flowed from a fixed reservoir, and it just happened to be running low at this precise moment. But it seemed more likely that her actions had done something to the balance of the fountain.

Nicole sat down, pondering. She considered everything she had done since arriving in this place. She mentally retraced her steps, walking back through her experiences. Nicole sat up straight. The entry room. The murals in the wallpaper. The rocks and trees ejecting the people from their space. There didn't seem to be any people here. Human people, at least. The message looked clear enough -- the human, or like-human, people, had been thrown out of this place by the objects. Or object-people, Nicole wasn't quite sure what to call them. She tried to imagine what this all must be like to the trees, or the rocks. Or the water. Or the puzzles. She looked at the sliding wood puzzle. She had solved it. Everything was where she had left it. 

Nicole chewed thoughtfully on her lip. She hated it when people moved her things. Mussed her hair or clothes, moved her books. She had started doing her own laundry last year because her dad, who really was trying, kept putting things away in the wrong places. He didn't put the shirts in order by softness, or the socks by thickness. He just couldn't tell because it didn't matter to him the same way it mattered to Nicole.

Nicole stood, brushing the dirt off her pants. "I'm so sorry," she said to the fountain. "I really appreciate what you've given me, and it was incredibly rude of me to not put you back properly. I'll fix it now." With slow caution Nicole moved all the sliding wood panels back the way they had been when she first arrived. "I hope that's better," she said. "And, again, I'm sorry. I'll be more careful in the future. Thank you." 

Quickly Nicole replaced the other puzzles she had solved, apologizing each time. She sat for a little while, watching the way the light made patterns on the grass through the leaves. When she was very thirsty and very hungry she got up and examined the puzzles. The water was flowing again. The fruit on the cylinder top was gone, replaced with what looked like bread. Nicole solved each puzzle, got her food and drink, and put things away again properly.

"I think I understand now," Nicole said to the wood. "I will try to be polite and follow the rules. I hope I can stay for a while." She looked up at the leaves, the sunlight glinting through. "I really like it here. You all make sense. Thank you."

A rustling noise came from behind Nicole. She turned around. There, standing in the grassy glen where no-one had been standing a moment ago, was a small … person, she decided. They were made of a bush or shrub. The person was half her height, though if they could straighten up they would be taller. They were leafy and green, with grey twigs and dark grey sticks. Their face was made of densely placed leaves with features composed of the shadows between foliage.

"Hello," Nicole said. "My name is Nicole. It's nice to meet you."

The voice of the shrub was a rustling whisper. If Nicole hadn't been listening she wouldn't have noticed it. "Welcome, Nicole of Human. You may call me Thuth."

"Thuth? Am I saying that right?"

"Indeed you are. Very well done." Thuth swayed back and forth a bit. Nicole decided that it was probably a positive emotional expression, since Thuth had just said 'well done'. "You are welcome here," continued the shrub, "for as long as you follow the rules."

Nicole nodded. This wasn't any different than anywhere else she had been in her life. School, church, the doctor's office, the grocery store. Everywhere had rules. "Are questions allowed?"

"Questions are required," Thuth said. "How else is one to learn?"

Nicole grinned. That was very good news. "Where is this place? What is it called? What is it?"

Thuth swayed again in the positive manner. "Where it ought to be," they said, "The Woods, and we are behind a Door, which is what all such places are. Places behind Doors. It is location, definition, and purpose."

"Can I go back to my place? If I do, can I return here?"

"You may go back. You may return. But you may return only until the moment you Understand. When you Understand, you will be in your place on the other side of the door forever."

Nicole frowned. "When I understand what, exactly?"

Thuth shook their body in a drooping, twisting motion. "That is the one thing I cannot explain to you. You will simply have to Understand."

"How do I get back here? Do I have to come through the school library every time?" Nicole was worried by that whole 'Understand' point, but set it aside for now. 

"Take the doorknob from the door back to your place. Use it on any door you please, and it will open to The Woods."

Nicole grinned and bounced up and down on her toes. This was better than she'd hoped for. A secret world made of puzzles, where she was supposed to ask questions! And she could come here any time she wanted! Overcome with delight, she put her hand forward towards Thuth. "Thank you so much," she said. 

Thuth looked at her hand.

"Do you shake hands, here?" Nicole asked.

"No," Thuth said. "We bow." The shrub bent forward. Nicole did the same. 

"Thank you for telling me," she said.

"Of course," Thuth answered. "I am always happy to answer your questions."

"I am going to go now," Nicole said. "But I will be back."

"I understand," Thuth said, and turned to go. Nicole watched them walk, studying their movements. It was interesting. Then she walked back across the grass to the door. The Door, she decided. It probably deserved a capital letter.

Back in the room between worlds Nicole studied the wallpaper again. There it all was, the story of The Woods. Be polite. Put things away. Treat other people with respect, even when they looked or acted differently than the other people you knew. Follow the rules as Thuth had told her. Ask questions. Nicole grinned. Asking questions was the best part.

Standing before the door that led home, Nicole turned the handle. The latch moved and the door opened very slightly. Holding onto the wood with one had, so it could not slip close, Nicole pulled on the doorknob with her other hand. It came out easily. Nicole nodded, satisfied, and put it in her pocket. She pulled the door open and stepped through.

She would be back again. Soon.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
